Most Underrated Character

[Pauln6]

I found Trip to be very annoying. McCoy and Pulaski (and she was a conscious, mistaken attempt to re-ignite a McCoy vibe) could IMO get away with it because they were medics and thus not part of the chain of command. Trip as a command officer was unprofessional, inappropriate, and used his friendship with the captain to obtain special favours. I love McCoy but I dislike Trip (apart from the T'Pol thing).

McCoy's so-called racism is a bit overblown. It's often workplace banter with someone he knows he can't offend and sometimes he's just venting his own fears and frustrations on someone who is able to remain so calm. I don't think McCoy should be judged in a politically correct prism but I do think that Trip should be judged against acceptable behaviour for a trained command officer.

 

[The Old Mixer]

Well, Pulaski I didn't like because she was such an insultingly blatant ripoff of McCoy, but that's another issue.

 

[Pauln6]

Very true and very obvious. I didn't dislike her, I just didn't see anything wrong with Beverley and didn't view Pulaski as an improvement. As far as the female dynamic went, I also questioned replacing the female security chief with a bartender so we had two people doing Troi's job. shame it took so long to hit upon Ro.

 

[TREK_GOD_1]

On that note I'm voting for McCoy. Maybe it's just a vocal minority, but in recent years I've seen what seems to be a trend of newer/younger viewers not getting what the character was about, and thinking that he was just an unlikable bigot.

Their misplaced, social warrior judgement prevents looking at the so-called "outsider" (Spock) as in truth, being just as bigoted, if not to a larger degree. Spock's often sweeping, arguably racist assessments of humans (serious, unlike McCoy's usual sarcasm/ribbing) was not uncommon during the run of TOS, but thanks to his being a "minority" character, his racism is ignored or excuses are dreamed up, while McCoy is close to being turned into the one-man Starfleet representative of the White Aryan Resistance, which is total BS.

 

[The Old Mixer]

Part of the angle that they're not getting is that Spock's role in that dynamic was that of the "more advanced" alien who was a critic of humanity's ways. McCoy was defending humanity and trying to take him down a peg. Humans in TOS didn't have the superiority complex that they developed in TNG.

 

[DarKush]

I was going to say Uhura, but when I saw the list included Rand and Chapel, now I'm not so sure. I'm leaning toward Rand. The only episode I remember her on was where the split Kirk assaulted her. Uhura didn't get many storylines or much development, and got slapped unnecessarily by that augment, but she got some spotlight.

 

[telerites]

Rand was pretty prominent in "Miri."

 

[Pauln6]

Rand was pretty prominent in "Miri."

Not really. She was there but did almost nothing. She couldn't even talk her way out of being badly tied up by a bunch of 8 year olds. Her most fun episodes are Charlie X and the Man Trap. If you roll together all the yeomen from all three seasons and include Helen Noel's role plus Uhura's parts in City on the Edge of Forever and the Trouble with Tribbles you are closer to what Rand could have been but then she would also be dead ;P

In fairness, that would have been an amazing way for one of the main characters to go.

 

[dammitjim6400]

What about Number one from the first pilot, or Lee Kelso from the second Pilot ?

 

[Nyotarules]

The issue with McCoy was that in the tos cast movies he was written very tone deaf and shrill. I think that tainted my perspective on his character from "voice of humanity" towards a southern bigot curmudgeon stereotype.

Sadly this is he comes across to me and I love the character. Replace some of things he says to Spock in the modern day US armed forces and Spock was a minority, He would not get away with it.

 

[suarezguy]

Too late for the poll but I've got to go with Spock, as popular as he is he was a really incredible character who was almost always adding a lot to the episodes.

 

[Gov Kodos]

Part of the angle that they're not getting is that Spock's role in that dynamic was that of the "more advanced" alien who was a critic of humanity's ways. McCoy was defending humanity and trying to take him down a peg. Humans in TOS didn't have the superiority complex that they developed in TNG.

Also, doctors were written as curmudgeonly assholes quite regularly back then. Take for example, the ever saintly Dr Marcus Welby:

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Unlike House, whose doltishness is noted by those around, Dr Welby was taken like McCoy or any other doctor in the 60s, lovable curmudgeon.

 

[telerites]

Also, doctors were written as curmudgeonly assholes quite regularly back then. Take for example, the ever saintly Dr Marcus Welby:

Unlike House, whose doltishness is noted by those around, Dr Welby was taken like McCoy or any other doctor in the 60s, lovable curmudgeon.

This was an interesting article from a medical journal published by Baylor University of Medical Center - it is titled
Doctors on display: the evolution of television's doctors (linkage - http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2943455/ )

Here is an excerpt. I agree there were curmudgeonly doctors like Doc from Gunsmoke but you had the other end like Dr. Kildare. Here is a small excerpt:

"We began with doctor shows sanctioned by medical associations wherein a doctor could do no wrong. As Turow noted, “It came back to bite them” (3). In today's doctor shows, the doctor is far from “priest-like.” The genre began by fusing the public's fascination with technology to a conception of the doctor that was unsustainable for several reasons. First, the supercharged expectations engendered by television doctors as curing and caring beings could not be supported by real doctors who were constrained by time and their own human foibles. Second, beginning with the Vietnam War, as confidence and faith in public institutions waned, doctors were not immune. Third, as the public became more familiar with medical technology, they began to demand it, rendering doctors into intermediaries for technology (23). Furthermore, the triumph of managed care and patient autonomy will likely support for some time the two types of dissonance between patient and doctor depicted in today's shows."

 

[Nyotarules]

Part of the angle that they're not getting is that Spock's role in that dynamic was that of the "more advanced" alien who was a critic of humanity's ways. McCoy was defending humanity and trying to take him down a peg. Humans in TOS didn't have the superiority complex that they developed in TNG.

They did not need to, watching TOS humans run the whole show. Spock was only the 'alien in the village,' everyone else in Starfleet was human. I recall the line in 'Undiscovered country' that the Federation was a humans only club, ok it was said by a Klingon but unless one used your imagination to know what was going on behind the scenes, TOS does present the Federation and Starfleet as a patriarchal 'humans only club' managed 100% by human males. It took the movies to show female captains, alien captains, Admirals and a multispecies Federation council. But if TOS was all that there was to Star Trek then yes humans run the show.

 

[MANT!]

Scotty would get my vote (if the poll wasn't a bit too limited in time)..

Besides being a hard drinking technician, Scotty couldn't handle himself when the right lass gave him the eye..